This section introduces aspects that may be helpful to facilitating a better understanding of the inventions. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
In optical communications systems, optical amplifiers are increasingly pumped with higher amounts of power to produce increasingly higher levels of optical amplification of an optical communication input signal. If the optical communication input signal is suddenly lost, however, the optical amplifier can malfunction by lasing, and, in some cases, damage itself or other components of the system. In some cases to deter this behavior, a standby seed laser with a fast turn on time is used. In the event that the input signal goes missing, the standby laser is intended to quickly turn on to protect the amplifier.